There's some movement in the Oracle-Google lawsuit today, but it's rather difficult to determine just what kind of movement. The jury was told by the judge Alsup to assume APIs are copyrightable - something Alsup still has to determine later during trial - and with that in mind, the judge ruled Google violated Oracle's copyright on Java. However, the jury did not come to an agreement on a rather crucial question: whether or not it was fair use. All in all, a rather meaningless verdict at this point, since it's incomplete. Also, what kind of nonsense is it for a judge to tell a jury to assume something is illegal? Am I the only one who thinks that's just complete insanity?

the difference is that the easy part that could have been avoided is a repetitive task. The difficult part has to be done anyway. If not it will have to be answered for the next case that comes along, unless of course the same logic is followed. Following your logic it could result in a lot of lawsuits where the jury first finds that the parties did not infringe on the copyright of someone elses API. And that it is only after the hundred and first lawsuit it will get an answer on whether or not it is illegal in the first place. Answering the hard question has to be done only once, and it would be good to actually know the answer.